


Looking for Friends for the World's End

by RunekeepersHymnal



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Developing Friendships, Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Separations, post-episode 6 AU: Rare Species
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:06:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23165950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunekeepersHymnal/pseuds/RunekeepersHymnal
Summary: A crossover that I have no idea if anyone else wanted, but I did.  Inspired by that meme of Bernie Sanders as D&D classes, specifically the one for Bloodhunter.Jaskier is doing just fine on his own, thank you, but he notices that his crowd of admirers is thinner than usual.  He investigates to find a rather colorful fortune teller reading cards for patrons.They hit it off.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 27
Kudos: 138





	1. The Speckled Thrush

**Author's Note:**

> Drawing on the Netflix series and some from the books for The Witcher, and campaign 2 for Critical Role. There may, eventually, be some Molly/Jaskier friends with benefits while they try to get back on track to their respective destinies, I haven't decided yet. Background pre-Molly/Caleb and pre-Jaskier/Geralt for now, and it won't show up in the text for a loooong while.

It wasn't the best pub, but he had certainly played worse.

Jaskier had decided that he would go to the coast with or without Geralt of Rivia, without someone to write songs and ballads and poems about… who knew? Perhaps Jaskier would find a new muse. Someone. Maybe himself. Jaskier had had enough adventures to write about. Jaskier had met a _fucking gold dragon._ He had material. 

He had hundreds of reasons not to miss Geralt. A thousand.

The Speckled Thrush even had a raised platform located in the acoustically best spot in the place on which he could perform, and from that vantage, he had made a fair amount of coin the past two nights.

Tonight, however, he was not drawing his usual crowd. It was a bit early in his presence at an inn for people to grow bored with his songs already. Suspicious, he tracked the densest bits of humanity, and saw them crowded cautiously in a darker corner of the pub. Jaskier finished his set, called to his smaller crowd that he would be taking a break, then strolled to the bar to purchase not one drink, but two. He carried both meads to the edge of the larger crowd, intrigued to see the source of the draw.

Craning his neck, Jaskier gasped. The crowd surrounded a creature more colorful than any Jaskier had ever seen. The figure had skin the color of wisteria blossoms, hair the violet of a fine Cintran syrah, and glorious tattoos dancing up his forearms where they emerged from his shirtsleeves. Two curling ram’s horns bedecked with jewels arched from his brow, and when he cast his gaze about the crowd, his eyes were crimson red from edge to edge.

What had drawn the crowd in so thoroughly was a spread of oracle cards laid across the table between the stranger and a buxom lass who’d been swooning over Jaskier himself not two nights prior. 

“Tragically for me, my darling," the strange man- Sylvan? Demon? -said to the young woman, "the cards declare that you will marry rich, a handsome suitor with chestnut hair, eyes like polished amber, and a kind, peaceful soul.”

The lass giggled and clapped, pressing coins into the fortune teller’s hands, brushing past Jaskier to celebrate with her friends. The fortune teller smiled broadly at the crowd, but there was a tension in the skin just next to the eyes, a little too much pressure of fang (fangs! How utterly charming!) into a playfully bitten lip. Jaskier knew a fraying soul when he saw one, and this stranger dearly needed an ear to bend.

“And I'm afraid the spirits require time to fly freely, lest they destroy my poor mortal vessel. Perhaps later, if the flesh is willing, I can read more for you good people. Until then, until then!” he called, dispersing the crowd with little quarter-bows from his chair.

Jaskier considered multiple conversation starters, angles to set this potential new acquaintance at ease, but found himself transfixed by red eyes before he could utter a word. Red, from edge to edge, not a trace of iris or pupil within, shiny like polished carnelian. 

The man's next smile seemed far more genuine.

“Behold, the competition!" he crowed, throwing his arms wide like Jaskier was a childhood friend he'd not seen in years. "Come, come sit, I've been enjoying your work! I believe they call you Jaskier?”

Jaskier put on his broadest smile, the one he knew made his eyes twinkle like a sun shower against a summer sky.

“You have me at an disadvantage, good seer, though anyone who can see beyond the veil, of course, would! I seem to have an extra mead, perhaps you could share your name and share a drink?”

The man shoved a chair out for Jaskier with his foot as he swept up his cards.

“Mollymauk Tealeaf!” he declared, “Molly to my friends. And since I've been partaking of your work all night without fair compensation, and since you've been so gracious as to cross my palm with a different sort of gold, you, my generous bard, shall have a reading on the house, should you wish it!”

The man, Mollymauk, took a deep drink of the mead Jaskier had provided and gestured emphatically for him to sit.

“You have a wonderful singing voice, my young friend," he said, his manner seeming quite sincere, “and people were singing, pardon the pun, your praises before you even arrived in town. Tell me, am I in the presence of a celebrity?”

Jaskier attempted to blush modestly, but imagined that he failed.

“Celebrity might be a _bit_ of a stretch this far out, but I’m not unknown. _You,_ on the other hand! Forgive me for saying, but I have met many races of humanoid before, but I have never seen one so striking as you, Master Tealeaf!” Jaskier exclaimed. “Please pardon me if I’m overstepping, but are you a sylvan? An incubus, perhaps?” 

The fortune teller’s face fell slightly.

“I’ve heard of parts of the world in which tieflings are unusual, but I confess, I’ve never been quite this rare a bird,” he murmured, taking another pull from his tankard.

“I’ve never heard the term before,” Jaskier confessed, fishing through his bag and pulling out his notebook and a quill, fishing around for ink as well. “May I ask, are the marks on your skin natural, or are they tattoos? What _is_ a tiefling, exactly? Where do you hail from?”

“I’m from the Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities,” Mollymauk began, looking bewildered when Jaskier suppressed a squeal of delight because _oh,_ that was good, this was amazing, this was already a saga in the making. “Most of these are tattoos, a few are… birthmarks, I suppose, is the best way to put it. A tiefling… a tielfing’s just another kind of person, if I’m honest. Lore holds that we come about in bloodlines whose forebears had some dealings with demons or devils, but we’re not demons or devils ourselves, no matter _what_ conclusions people might jump to based on… well, on all of this.”

“All of that is _magnificent,_ by the way, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” Jaskier interjected. “Where is the rest of your troupe?”

“We split up a while ago. Our ringmaster wound up in a local prison for some unpleasantness.”

“And what did you do in this carnival?” Jaskier asked, riveted, writing furiously. “Did you do anything besides the fortune telling?”

“I was a barker. Drummed up business, which, well, looking as I do, not hard to command some sort of attention and get folk to take a flyer. I wasn’t unskilled as an acrobat, or a juggler, but there were better in our show, so it wasn’t often used.”

“And what brings you out to the coast?” Jaskier asked. His new friend opened his mouth, smile broad, face cheerful, but that tension was back around the eyes as he gazed (Jaskier thought?) into Jaskier’s own. 

“I was…” the man stopped and shut his mouth, before opening it again, then shutting it once more. The grin slipped away from his face.

“Let me give you that reading first, good sir bard,” he said at last, retrieving his deck from his coat (lovely, must get the name of his tailor), “and then we can talk more about boring little me. Tell me, are there any mysteries of the universe after which you’d like to inquire?” 

Jaskier paused in his scribbling.

“I’ve traveled far and wide pursuing many of them,” he confessed, setting the quill aside, capping the ink, and checking his fingers for any blots or drips. “I think…”

Jaskier broke off, considering. 

“But there is something I’d like to know. It’s a bit foolish.”

Mollymauk held the deck out to him.

“Shuffle please, while concentrating on what you’d like the universe to tell you,” he instructed, spreading his cloth across the table. Jaskier thought, then started letting the cards slip and bridge between his hands, spinning them this way and that. Mollymauk looked impressed.

“No fair stacking the deck in your own favor,” he chuckled. “Damnation, you’re very good at that! I’m going to be out of a job at this tavern with you around.”

Jaskier scoffed.

“Hardly,” he replied. “We just had to do a bit of jester work at Oxenfurt, as well as dance and theater. Let me tell you, stage combat does _not_ translate to the real world In. The. Slightest. It is the active pursuit of not hitting people with the sharp pointy thing or your fist. You’d think that it would help you at least get close but…”

Jaskier glanced at the sword belt slung behind his new acquaintance’s chair, and the scars peppering his body. 

“Seems like you probably don’t have that problem.” 

“I get by,” Mollymauk agreed. “Most of the time, anyway.”

Jaskier held the deck back out to him.

“Anything you want to ask out loud?” Mollymauk prompted. Jaskier hesitated, but there was a safety in strangers, at least in matters like that.

“Did he mean it? Does he regret it? Will we meet again?” Jaskier asked, each question a little more fervent than the last. Mollymauk wrapped his hands around Jaskier's, holding it with the deck for a moment and peering into his face with those polished corundum eyes. 

“Let’s find out, Jaskier the Bard,” he replied, taking the deck. Mollymauk sat back and held the cards. “Three to start, I think, one for each question.”

Molly dealt his cards, one, two, three. 

“The first, whether your mysterious ‘he’ meant his mysterious ‘it,’” Molly began. “We have the Fall. It’s upright, which tends to the affirmative, but he was terribly off-balance when he said it. Just had a bit of a terrible shock, and we say, and mean, some very extreme things when we’re shocked.”

Jaskier sighed, sitting back. 

“I thought these sorts of things were meant to be comforting,” Jaskier pouted. 

“Sorry,” Mollymauk said with a wink and a softer smile. “I find myself liking you, quite a bit, and that means that I think you need truth rather than bullshit. But that’s just the first card, so don’t get too down in the dumps just yet.”

Jaskier picked up the card and peered at the figure. 

“Is this a goddess?” he asked about the diving red haired figure. “Too svelte to be Melitele.”

“She’s a legend I heard once,” Mollymauk said. “Now, the next card, ‘Does he regret it?’ Your answer is Silence, upright. Another affirmative. Silence is a tricky thing. Silence leaves you alone with yourself, and when faced with only yourself, you realize what you may have not known to miss before. The silence of this card is heavy, it’s not the sort of peaceful, temporary silence of sleep, or of a quiet moment. This silence, I think, is regret, my friend.”

Jaskier’s breath escaped him. Geralt had talked so long of the silence he desired, and now, if these cards were to be believed, he had it, and now, did not find it so desirable.

“Lastly, the third card, to tell us whether you two will meet again,” Mollymauk said, tapping the card with a taloned fingertip and an intrigued expression. “The Gale. It’s interesting, that, because normally the Gale blows things off course, but again, this is upright, so you will meet again. Perhaps when one of you is diverted from the path you intended.”

Mollymauk drew and laid another card atop that one.

“The Angel,” he said. “That’s a divine presence of sorts, but not a god or a goddess. Whatever will bring you back together is divine will made manifest.”

Jaskier let out a breathless little chuckle.

“Destiny,” he whispered. 

“That’s a word for it,” Mollymauk agreed, smiling, sweeping the cards back up. Jaskier laughed louder and beamed.

“Thank you,” he said. “You… this is a weight off my shoulders.”

“I’m glad,” Mollymauk replied. "And now I'm going to pry- the one you're asking after, this is the White Wolf from your songs, isn't it?"

"You get no credit for that one, seer; I am _well_ aware of my crystalline transparency," Jaskier scoffed, drinking deeply from his tankard. Rather than take offense, Mollymauk threw back his head and _cackled,_ laughter as raucous and indifferent to disturbing others as a murder of crows. 

"Too true, nor would I claim any," he said once his laughter had abated to a sigh. "It has been a true pleasure, Jaskier, but I should go make camp before it gets too much darker."

Jaskier's brow furrowed, glancing at the heavy coin purse the fortune teller was tucking away.

"Why on Earth would you camp when you've done so well for an evening? Surely they're not out of rooms, most of these folk are locals."

"Needs must, my friend," Mollymauk shrugged. "I have a longer journey than most could imagine to try to get home, and I must save every copper so that, should the opportunity appear, I can afford it."

Jaskier had planned on trying to find a bed mate, share a late supper and drinks and then hopefully some energetic sex, preferably with someone as ticklish and fond of the fact as Jaskier himself. He wanted to laugh tonight. But he wanted stories even more than that, and this strange new friend was teeming with them.

"My room happened to come with two beds," Jaskier said, coy and sweet and harmless, "and sooner or later, people are going to tire of songs about the White Wolf. What would you say to an arrangement? A night of a shared roof on my coin for each story told?"

Mollymauk tilted his head, and for a moment, Jaskier's heart twanged an off-key note for Geralt. Unlike when he had propositioned Geralt at their first meeting, Mollymauk smiled at him.

"What makes you so sure I have stories?"

"Many scars, dear seer," Jaskier confessed, "and your tattoos, and that you're a species of which I've never heard, and I've been around in every possible sense of around, and... there's a melancholy note, in amongst your vitality. There's a richness... layers upon layers. I could whistle a bit of you and it would be charming and catchy, but it's when those phrases and _leitmotifs_ all come together that the real depth and profundity of the piece emerges."

Jaskier realized he'd been talking for a long time, and trailed off with an awkward:

"Or something."

Mollymauk only made him suffer in silence for a second before saying,

"It's truly a shame you're not trying to get me into bed because that would have worked!" with a luminous grin. Jaskier grinned back in relief.

"Will it work for getting a few stories?"

"Work a treat at that. Have you had supper?"

"Not yet," Jaskier said, "but I'll buy if I get to pick the sort of story you tell first."

"Deal well made.''

Jaskier bought them a bottle of the best mead on offer and ordered supper up to the room they'd be sharing, where his new friend (The violet visionary? No, that was awful. Purple prophet? Worse. Wisteria wise man? Oxenfurt wanted his degree back.) took off his coat and swords and settled onto the other bed. 

"Two swords?" Jaskier asked once they had settled and started their meal.

"I like to multitask in a fight," Mollymauk said, dragging bread through a bowl of stew.

"Are they different?"

"From what?"

"From each other," Jaskier clarified. "Is one silver, one steel?"

"No, both carnival glass," Mollymauk replied, setting his food aside, drawing one, and holding it out for Jaskier to examine. The blade almost looked metal, but closer inspection revealed it to be a deep bluish-purple, almost black pressed glass, overlaid with an iridescent finish. Jaskier couldn't see any chips or cracks in the edge.

"And these work in battle?" Jaskier asked. "How do they not shatter?"

Mollymauk shrugged. 

"I have a theory or two, nothing certain."

Jaskier finished his stew and set the bowl aside, taking out a quill, ink, and a notebook he hadn't opened in some time before tonight.

"I know what sort of story I want first," he declared. "An origin story.''

Mollymauk paused, slowly re-sheathing the sword. 

"...the only origin story I know is mine," he said, putting it back with its mate and taking up his bowl again.

"What a funny coincidence," Jaskier smiled, fluttering his eyelashes. "That's the very one I want!"

"You wily fucker," Mollymauk murmured, sounding impressed. "Well."

He held out his glass, which Jaskier filled, sipped, then spoke.

"I have clawed my way out of my own grave twice. The second time was about eight months ago, the first time, about two years before that."

"You've been buried alive twice?"

"Oh no, I've been buried dead twice," Molly corrected, "but damned if it has yet to stick."

Jaskier wrote this all down as swiftly as he could.

"I feel like I'm going to get lost,'' he said. He thought he might have heard Molly mutter 'join the fucking club, dear,' and asked, "Could we begin before you got buried the first time? That seems like the sort of event that needs some context, you know?"

"That's just it: I don't know," Mollymauk replied with a rueful flick of his spoon. "I have no memories from before I clawed my way out of my first grave, just vague images and vibrations."

He hesitated, seemingly considering swallowing his next words before saying:

"But once upon a time, I'm given to understand that my name used to be Lucien."

Jaskier couldn't help himself, he broke into a wide grin and giggle.

"What?" Molly asked, confused, but not apparently offended.

"Destiny's just funny," Jaskier smiled. "My name used to be Julian."

  
  



	2. The Speckled Thrush: Mead and Sympathy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's take this upstairs! But not in a sexy way. Except it's Molly and Jaskier, so of course it's sexy (it's not sexy). 
> 
> Detective Jaskier is on the case! He's got inspiration, he's got a new friend, and he's got all the time in the world. 
> 
> CW: Panic attack / anxiety attack, abandonment issues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More of this nonsense! 
> 
> So: Regarding Witcher sources- this is based 90% on the Netflix series, with occasional abscondings from the books when I need a character. I'm using the Netflix timeline and map, and fact checking against the Witcher Fandom wiki, which I think may be more focused on the games. I may stumble into spoilers for the Witcher books by accident more than anything else.
> 
> There shouldn't be any spoilers for anything beyond episode 26 of Critical Role for now, but there will likely be in the future, just not sure which episodes yet.

"I clawed my way out of my first grave, and I remembered absolutely nothing. My hair was close cropped, almost shaved, and I had nine red eye-shaped marks on me."

Mollymauk tapped the right side of his neck, and sure enough, the bard’s bright blue eyes locked with the red one of the peacock he had tattooed there.

"Not including your actual eyes?" Jaskier clarified. His tongue poked out in the most charming way, quill scratching as Molly caught sight of him sketching the peacock in the margins next to the notes he was writing. 

"No, not counting those," Mollymauk chuckled. "I was alone, with no memory, and was wandering down the road, and the carnival happened along. All I could say was 'Empty,' so the ringmaster forged me up some papers under the name Mollymauk Tealeaf. Gustav wasn't the most clever, definitely not the most wise, but he gave me my name and a home. I learned or remembered how to talk again, got decorated, magnificently, if I do say so myself, learned to juggle, messed around with some balancing acts and that, started drawing my deck and telling fortunes, but mostly I drummed up business. Once in a while, we’d run a bit of a scam. Plenty of towns don’t trust carnival folk, or just loathe fun--”

“Tell me about it,” Molly’s new bard friend muttered, still scribbling furiously.

“--so we ran the occasional grift, which is really just a carnival that people don’t know they’re attending.”

“A surprise carnival!” Jaskier supplied in delight. Molly cackled.

“If only you’d been around whenever we were in front of the crownsguard! Surprise carnival is an excellent alibi. So, one fine day we headed into a town we’d been through once before, and I ran into a table of strange fuckers, invited them to the show. But something dreadful happened during the performance and, well… one of our patrons turned into a slavering monster and started eating other patrons.”

Jaskier dropped his quill.

“What kind of performance  _ was  _ it?!” he asked, aghast.

Molly leaned in, grin wide and sinister.

_ “Musical,”  _ he growled. Jaskier gasped.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No! That’s  _ tragic!  _ I mean, obviously, death and cannibalism, but induced by a musical performance? Was it that wonderful or that terrible?” Jaskier asked, laying a hand on his lute protectively.

Molly sighed.

“Sad story. One of our performers turned out to be a literal fiend from hell who was slowly draining the life force from his partner in their act, a child with a beautiful singing voice. I don’t know why, but he snapped. Apparently sucking the life from someone quickly turns them into a flesh-eating living corpse. The authorities were not best pleased, so I teamed up with the weird fuckers to try to solve it. We figured it out eventually, but the carnival was done for. So I started travelling with them, and my dearest friend from the carnival, Yasha, instead.”

Jaskier nodded firmly. 

“All right. Good framework. We’ll start with the story of the undead, the origin story is a bit complex, a little over the heads of most tavern crowds. The lack of an origin story is actually effective, aura of mystery builds interest. You’ll be the hero of the ballad, of course, no offense meant to your companions, but you’re the muse here. Where did all this take place? Temeria? I could see this happening in Temeria, Dorian is that sort of a town.”

Molly sighed, knowing the impending reaction to what he was about to say:

“No, Trostenwald,” he said, hit with a wave of being overwhelmed. Molly was used to patter, and was used to interrogation, but Jaskier’s combination of genuine openness and interest combined with his rapid-fire questions and careening train of thought had Molly very much on the back foot. “You’re really going to write a song about all this?”

“Of course!” Jaskier beamed. “Now, I’ve never heard of Trostenwald; is that in Temeria?”

“No,” Molly said, fussing with the jewelry in his horns, breath quickening, “it’s in the Dwendalian Empire.”

“ _ No  _ idea where that is,” Jaskier said, pausing as a broken laugh bubbled out of Molly against his better attempts at keeping it down.

“Yeah. I’ve not recognized the name of a single town, city,  _ country,  _ river, you name it since I made it out of grave number two. Not only does no one know any of the kings, queens,  _ gods,  _ that I know, they’ve also never heard of what I  _ am! _ ” Molly exclaimed. “It’s like this time I crawled out of the wrong fucking grave in the wrong fucking ground in the wrong fucking world!”

Molly didn’t jerk away when Jaskier’s hand slipped across and wrapped around Molly’s, making a soft, soothing noise.

“Easy friend,” the bard murmured.

“I’m fucking alone,” Molly said, deteriorating in the face of kindness, his strong, blithe front no mach for gentleness. “I’m fucking alone, again, and I don’t even know what direction home is, and…”

The bard must’ve set his writing materials aside because neither of them got doused in ink as Jaskier gripped both of Molly’s shoulders.

“Easy, easy, Mollymauk, Molly,” Jaskier murmured, thumbs stroking along his collarbones slowly. Thank goodness Molly had managed to stumble across someone who knew how to ease him from a panic attack. 

“I don’t… Jaskier, I don’t even know if I’m on the right plane of existence. I’m a fucking freak of nature here, I’ve nearly been fucking murdered about seven times by random terrified villagers!”

“They do do that, yes, but Molly, listen. Listen?” Jaskier ducked his head to try to get Molly to look at his face. His voice was soft, but still bright, gentle but unafraid. “Are you listening?”

Jaskier waited until Molly’s breathing evened out and he was able to meet Jaskier’s eye.

“I’m alone too,” Jaskier said, uncomplaining, matter of fact. “Don’t really want to be, either. I’ve spent the last twenty years, off and on, following one man, collecting his stories. Before I made him famous, I made him… if not human, then humanized. You seem like an ocean of stories, and an ocean of loneliness. Love the first, hate the second, so… I have no plans. I could stick with you for as long as you like. Try to help you find answers, watch each other’s backs… I know you’ve no reason to trust me, I’m a stranger--”

“Yes,” Molly interrupted.

Jaskier blinked.

“Yes?” he asked.

“I’ll go with you. Or you can come with me. Some combination of the two.”

Jaskier, if anything, looked more surprised than Molly.

“And you’re sure you don’t want to punch me in the gut, first?” Jaskier asked cautiously.

“What?” Molly squawked. “No, why?!”

“I just have that effect sometimes,” Jaskier shrugged. Molly patted the hand on his left shoulder, leaving his own over it.

“Not really what I’m into. But… you’re right. Between my magic and yours--”

“Beg pardon? Sorry to disappoint you so early on, but I’m about as magic as shoe leather.”

“But you’re a bard,” Molly said. Jaskier sighed, slipping around to sit next to Molly instead of across. 

“Perhaps another difference between terminologies where you’re from and here?” Jaskier shrugged, maintaining contact by throwing an arm over Molly’s shoulders. “Look at it this way- we’re able to understand one another, that has to be a good sign for being at least in the right universe?”

Molly took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 

“Maybe,” he said. “Sorry. I usually try to let someone get used to me for a week or so before I subject them to a full on panic attack.”

Jaskier tutted, tightening his sidelong embrace a bit.

“Honestly? The vulnerability is relatable. Sorry to… I don’t know, bear witness to your vulnerability so early into our friendship?” 

Molly laughed.

“You’re a bloody likeable fucker, you know that?” he said. 

“As are you, you horny prick,” Jaskier jibed back, unhooking his arm from Molly’s shoulders to take up his writing utensils again, but keeping his hip snug against Molly’s, anchoring with physical contact. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I can’t imagine being so far from everything you know is anything but terrifying.”

Molly shrugged in reply, and didn’t imagine that the crooked grin he mustered up reached his eyes.

“It’s just so much like coming out of my first grave. At least I can speak. I have my name, and my past, even if it means nothing to anyone but me. But what about you? Travelling with the same person off and on for two decades, how do you come to be travelling alone now?”

Jaskier fussed with his quill, idly pulling apart the vanes and smoothing them back together.

“In the end, Geralt, the White Wolf Witcher, did not find me to be such a ‘likeable fucker,’” Jaskier explained. “I… I wouldn’t say I caused him some troubles, but I could have been said to be the catalyst for some of them coming home to roost, including his lady love walking away from him, perhaps for good. So, we parted ways, and he made it clear that he did not wish for us to reconvene.”

“His ill temper is my good fortune, then,” Molly replied, “because I was pretty close to the end of my rope when you brought that mead to my table.”

  
Jaskier chuckled.

“You hide it well,” he said. 

“And you know how difficult that is,” Molly filled in the unspoken bit.

“Oh, I just shove it all into a little box with my spare lute strings. Singing can be a great deal like screaming your head off, if you know what you’re doing,” Jaskier agreed. “But let’s focus on what we can learn of you and where you come from, compared to what I know of here. I didn’t master all seven liberal arts to go about these things willy-nilly.”

Bit by bit, Jaskier’s notes turned from inspirational tidbits to research documentation, truth tables, tidy lists of facts in evidence. Atop the first page, Jaskier wrote “Places and Things,” dividing the page into two columns, and had Molly list off the name and approximate location of every town, city, river, lake, mountain, and ocean that he could recall. Jaskier knew not a one of them. The next page was for major political figures, leaders, celebrities, criminals, and again, Jaskier didn’t recognize a single name. 

Molly managed to remain calm, right up until they discussed time, and Jaskier revealed that, as he knew it, it was 1262. 

“No,” Molly’s breathing quickened as he did math in his head, or tried. “Four hundred years?”

Jaskier put his hand on Molly’s jittering knee.

“Molly, what year do you think it is?” he asked.

“Eight thirty-five?” Molly asked more than said. Jaskier let his thumb circle to distract Molly from the panic reaction of his body so that his mind could focus.

“And the month?” 

“Fessuran,” Molly said, more confidently. Jaskier squeezed.

“There. I’ve never heard of it. Different calendar. How do you count your years? Eight hundred and thirty-five since what, the birth of the world?”

“Umm… no, no, we count by ages. The Prime Deities separated themselves from the material plane to protect it from the Betrayer Gods. It’s called the Divergence, and we count the years forward from that. That’s our age.”

“I’ve no idea what the Divergence might or mightn’t be either. Easy, friend, easy,” Jaskier soothed. “Easy.”

“I don’t even know if they’re dead or not,” Molly shuddered, putting his face in his hands. “I don’t know if my family is alive. I don’t know if anyone I’ve ever known is still alive.”

“I know, I know, dear heart,” Jaskier murmured, gently pulling one of Molly’s wrists until he could hold his hand in his own. “We’ll discover what we can discover as we discover it. Be still, dear heart.”

Molly nodded, struggling to slow his breathing. Jaskier chewed his lip fretfully.

“Hug?” he asked, dropping Molly’s hand to open his arms. Molly leaned in, his arms folding around Jaskier’s rib cage tentatively, then tighter, awkward as it might be. Jaskier chuckled.

“I think I’m making this worse, aren’t I?” Jaskier chuckled sadly. Molly shook his head, Jaskier letting out a little ‘oof’ as the crest of Molly’s horn prodded his pectoral. 

“You’re really not,” Molly replied. “You’re pretty good at this.”

“I’ve… I guess I’ve known enough people whose lives are defined by strange circumstances that I’ve gotten some practice in. But you’ve given me an idea! Gods. List me every God and Goddess you have, please, and what they represent.”

At last: Progress. 

Under Jaskier’s gentle interrogation, they determined similar deities. They dismissed the Sun and, despite Molly’s reservations, the Moon deities as being too commonly worshiped. Motherhood seemed just as common to Molly, but Jaskier seemed to think that the similarities between Molly’s Melora the Wildmother and his own people’s Melitele to consider it worth pursuing. The next most similar were Kord, the Stormlord, who seemed very close to Kreve of the pantheons Jaskier knew. Molly had been more keen to pursue the Kord-Kreve connection, hoping that Yasha’s god might guide them back together.

“Ah. Well,” Jaskier admitted, “I don’t actually know anyone who worships Kreve? So… bit of a rocky start there?”

Molly threw his hands in the air.

“You’re the one who brought him up!” he protested.

“I’m just trying to be comprehensive!” Jaskier said sheepishly. “I haven’t written a true epic, and The Mirror of the Gods has a beautiful ring to it! Think of it, an operatic cycle of the pantheons of two worlds slowly approaching, mistaking an alternative reality for their own reflections, until the reflections move of their own volition--”

“I thought the point of this exercise was reassuring me that our realities were one and the same and that I’m  _ not _ lost in a world I cannot understand or escape?!” Molly grinned frantically, speaking through his teeth.

“Yes, of course, this is purely for fictional purposes later, not reflective of the reality of the situation, Molly,” Jaskier explained. “Sorry, sorry, tactless, but I can’t help it, I’m an artist, the urge to craft beauty is irresistible to me, but helping first, I swear!”

Molly glared for a moment.

“I’m downgrading you from ‘pretty good at this’ to ‘making this up respectably as you go,’” he said at last. Jaskier poked his lower lip out and pouted at this pronouncement.

“What if I offered you another hug?” Jaskier asked.

“Later,” Molly said. “How long will it take to talk to someone from Melorita?”

“Melitele,” Jaskier corrected. “And I know someone, she doesn’t actually like me in the slightest, but she’s a good authority. She’s in Ellander. It’s a few days' ride if we’re fast, a week or so if we take our time.”

“Mmh. I don’t actually have a horse,” Molly said, and Jaskier shrugged.

“Neither do I, so that will take longer unless we can hitch a ride on a wagon headed that way.”

Molly gave Jaskier a distinctly unimpressed look.

“Yes, let’s just go up to some random tradesman and say, ‘Oh, good fellow, could you perhaps spare some room in your cart for the  _ only violet demon anyone’s ever seen on this bloody continent?’ _ ” Molly suggested. Jaskier rolled his eyes.

“Well  _ I  _ know you’re not a demon, and I’m very convincing!”

“Convincing enough to coax a peasant into believing something other than their own eyes? I believe you’re good, I’m not sure I believe you’re that good.”

“A disguise, then?” Jaskier asked. “Surely you’ve had to keep a low profile before.”

“Of course I have.”

“And how did it go?” Jaskier prompted, face full of optimism.

“...middling,” Molly finally conceded. Jaskier’s eyes went wide.

“Oh! I’ve an idea! I’ve a  _ good  _ and clever idea, this is brilliant. I had a lover once in Roggevan, and she gave me an amulet that disguised me for a few hours at a time. It could make me look like anyone so I could sneak in and out without someone in her household ratting me out to her husband. She said she got it here in Cidaris! Hand me the wine, otherwise I’m going to be too excited to sleep.”

Molly, somewhat bemused, handed over the bottle.

For the first time since meeting Jester and Nott, Molly felt slightly intimidated by someone else’s chaos. 


End file.
